Known To God

Written after a trip to the war cemeteries at Ypres. If anyone wants to use it in an act of remembrance, feel free, but please don't make money from it, unless you give it to an armed services charity.

KNOWN TO GOD

They seemed to go on forever. Little splashes of pure white on a lush green that rose and fell, rose and fell as far as the eye could see. The sheer scale of it overwhelmed me. It brought the sting of tears and a heavy heart.

There were so many.

I didn’t know any of them. I don’t have a relative or family friend here. But in a way, they were all my relatives. All my friends.

I walked slowly along the nearest row of crosses, reading the inscriptions. Some had names and regimental badges carved into them. Here a Sergeant slept beside a Private, who rested easily beside his Lieutenant. All of equal rank now. Every one of them of great worth to me.

Some headstones told their ages:

Forty two years. Did he have a wife waiting at home, anxious for news? Children who treasured memories of rough and tumble with Daddy on the green? Grandchildren to bounce on his knee?

Twenty one years. Just come of age, a lifetime ahead. A sweetheart, making plans for a wedding that never happened?

Eighteen years. Was this a spotty youth with a sullen lip that curled down when his mother called?

Fifteen years. A child! He should have been at home, chasing friends and shouting, “You’re it!” before running off for tea.

There were five men beneath one headstone. Three beneath the next. Eight men, huddled together for eternity in a space no bigger than a fox hole.

The next cross carried no regimental badge. No name for living fingers to trace. It said simply, “A soldier, known to God”.

Who mourned him? Who sat at home, waiting, wondering, hoping when hope was no longer an option? Did someone grow old watching the lane that maybe, just maybe, he would yet walk along?

“Known to God.”

I’d read about the place. The battle. The slaughter. I learned it in school, saw it re-enacted on TV. But nothing could have prepared me for this. I passed through the ranks of this company of crosses and became one with these uncredited men who had given their all. For me. A person not born when these lives were laid down. A person of no consequence to them. But they were willing to march into hell. For me.

“Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

But there IS a greater love. It is the love of a man who will lay down his life, not just for his friends but for those who are not his friends: his rivals, his enemies, people he has never even met. That was the love these men showed, here, in Flanders’ Fields.

I looked down at the cross once more.

“Known to God.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

Many are the ways God moves in our lives...

Maybe it’s because I write, but I am fascinated by other people, especially people whose experiences are completely different to mine. I want to know what makes them who they are, why they do what they do, make the choices they make. To quote my all time favourite fictional hero, Atticus Finch, I want to “climb into their skin and walk around in it.”

So I’m very much looking forward to a week long series of interviews with people, some of whose lives have been as different to mine as night is to day.

Hosted by All Saints Church in Crowborough, and conducted by Roger Carswell, the interviewees are diverse and include former UVF terrorist, David Hamilton, entertainer and broadcaster Fiona Castle, John, who works in countries along the silk route, Tim, a Christian minister with an Iraqi Muslim background and Susie, director of Bethany Children’s Trust, which rescues street children.

What all these people have in common is a strong Christian faith, and the interviews will, of course, show how that faith has affected their lives. Whether you share that faith or not, their accounts of the difference it has made to them promise to be riveting.

The interviews are part of The Cross Factor, which runs from Sunday 11^th to Sunday 18^th November. As well as the interviews, the festival includes a reasonably priced Men’s Breakfast at Barnsgate Manor, and special services on both Sundays.

But it’s the interviews, the insights into extraordinary lives, that I suspect will have the most impact on the audiences.

Attendance at the interviews is free. All of them will take place at All Saints Church Centre, and all you need to do is turn up. For more details, call the Church Office on 01892 652081, or visit the festival website, www.crossfactor.org.uk